Thursday, November 5, 2009

Captain America: Reborn #4

This type of story should really have been told in an Avengers comic. Oh well. Ed Brubaker is finally bringing his Dead Cap epic to a close, and he's got an eye on Cap's history while he does it. Cap continues shifting throughout his history, and it seems to be wearing on him. Cap mentions that he "can't feel fatigue" which is an interesting (and useful) take on his super-soldier serum, but Cap's starting to get worn down emotionally. He's lucky that the Red Skull's plan is coming to fruition.

Hank Pym, Vision, and Reed Richards are trying to nail down exactly what the Skull and Arnim Zola are trying to do, but while they can only theorize, Sharon Carter is living it. Sharon is indeed the "anchor" for Cap, with his blood somehow tagged to hers. With surprisingly little fanfare, Zola and Dr. Doom yank Cap out of the past back to the present, but with an important change. The Red Skull is now in Cap's body. This really is excellent plotting; when Cap was killed, the Skull was still sharing a body with Alexander Lukin, so naturally his plan at the time was to take over Steve Rogers' body. When that failed, the Skull went about discrediting Cap using the 50s Cap, so he still followed much of his original plan, just using a proxy. Even better, it has long been established that the Skull is envious of the perfect specimen that is Captain America (heck, he lived in a Cap-clone body for awhile in the 90s). This is a great convergence of plot and continuity, I'm really pleased Brubaker is pulling it off.

Bryan Hitch spent more time on this issue. Most of the characters look like he drew them this time, allowing Butch Guice to tighten the pencils with his scratchy inks. The final page is a little in your face, but I love how strongly it gets across its point; Cap's back, but that's not a good thing.